Admin: Rules and General Information

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

halfamoon: Rules and General Information

This FAQ was modified (with permission) from anenko’s FAQ for 100_women here.

Welcome to halfamoon!

What’s this community about?

Half a Moon is a fourteen day multifandom challenge celebrating female characters, which will run from February 1 through Valentine's Day.

Do I have to post something all fourteen days?

Definitely not! You can participate as much or as little as you would like, although we ask that if possible you try not to post more than once a day.

Linking or recommending your own stuff is also encouraged, and not all of your content has to be created uniquely for halfamoon. If an older fanwork fits the theme of this community, feel free to post it here.

What can and can’t I post?

Fanfiction, vids, recs, art, picspam, icons, meta, fanmixes, and outside links to all of the above are welcome--the only requirement is that the primary focus must be on a female character or characters.

Gen, het, and femslash (any fandom, any character(s), any rating) are all fine. M/M slash is allowed as long as the focus is on a female character, who is present and active in her own right.

The intent of this community isn’t to exclude male characters, but to celebrate the numerous awesome--but often neglected--female characters in our various fandoms. Therefore, the focus of the story should be on a female character, and *her* life, thoughts, feelings, relationships, and adventures--*not* focused primarily on the males in her life.

If you’re unsure whether it’s appropriate to post something here, please just ask first.

Can I post a story about an original female character?

The purpose of the community is to bring attention to existing female characters, but you can post stories about original female characters as long as there’s a reasonable connection to canon. (For example, fandom: BtVS/Angel, original character: Jane Slayer.)

Does my female character have to be human/humanoid?

No. If you want to write about female dragons, or horses, or sentient living spaceships, or Star Trek’s feminine-voiced computer system, go ahead.

What’s "female", anyway?

Gender identity isn’t simple. So long as your character self-identifies as female, you're more than welcome to post about them. (Stories where a male-identified character is in drag for kink or plot-related reasons do not qualify.) If your character is both male *and* female, you can also post about them here. We are not accepting genderswitch or "always a woman" AU stories. Essentially we are looking for stories about characters who identify as female *in canon*.

What constitutes appropriate focus on a female character is ultimately up to the mods, and our decisions are final.

What is the minimum word count?

There’s no minimum length.

What information should be included when posting? What else should I keep in mind when posting?

Please label your posts in the subject line by type (fiction, vid, recs, icons, etc.), fandom, and the names of your female character(s) and/or pairing.

IF your post

--is graphics-intensive
--contains embedded video
--is longer than a few paragraphs
--contains adult content and/or is not safe for work

PLEASE be courteous and provide such information in your headers (and post the work itself behind an lj-cut).

Again, it’s also fine to post outside links rather than posting on halfamoon itself.

Keep in mind that there is a character limit for the memories function, so if you have too many different fandoms listed on one entry, they won’t all make it into the memories.

Finally, you must enable comments on your entries, or we won’t be able to tag your entry, or add it to the memories.

HAVE FUN!

Comments

[anenko.livejournal.com]

I promoted the community at the Avatar newsletter a while back; I just hit the newsletters for the Ouran, Bleach, Naruto, Chuck, Pushing Daisies, and Heroes fandoms (I feel a bit like a spammer!)

[belladonnalin.livejournal.com]

Quick question - I'm doing a female-character-centered story for each of the days on 14valentines. Is it cool to crosspost the links here?

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Absolutely!

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

Hi... I had something I wanted to post here, which is a very short story I was working on where I took two female characters and put them in the roles of the two male main characters in the story in an AU. It's not genderswitch and they're still their canonically female selves, but they're the protagonist and antagonist rather than side characters (and I did do some necessary borrowing from the original antagonist's back story because it's central to that role.) I wrote it for here in a way, but then it hit me that maybe that's not such a great idea... let me know if you can if it's OK to post. Sorry if that's hideously confusing.

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

It's so hard to tell without knowing the details, but it doesn't really sound as if it's going against the spirit of the challenge (like, it sounds like the women are remaining themselves, just stealing the men's narrative, which is totally fine with me!). So I would say go ahead and post. If these are relatively obscure characters and/or in a rare fandom, I'd also love notes about who the women are and why they're awesome *g*--but only if you feel like bothering.

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

Hi! I just joined the community, which show up on my flist, but I don't seem to show up as a member on the comm's info page. Am probably being dense, but... anything I need to do in addition?

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

Okay, got it. Apologies!

[puppetoflove.livejournal.com]

Question, just to make sure, are we allowed multiple fics/art in one post? I have a lot of drabbles, one written for fanart I made. Should I post them separately each day, or can I throw them all into one little mega post of mini stories?

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

No, please do a mega-post, that's great!

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Question - I have a ficlet in which the pov character is male, but the entire fic is ABOUT a female character of his acquaintance. Does that fit the rules or no?

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

I don't see why not, if the fic is still focused on the woman... thanks for asking, though!

[ladymordecai.livejournal.com]

Can regular members make new tags, and if so, how? I've posted a DC comics story where the main character isn't on one of the available tags. Thanks!

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

I added character tags for the story, so see if it will let you add them now.

[elanurel.livejournal.com]

Heya! I just found out about this community today, and I don't think I'll have time to write anything new for it...but I'd like to participate. I do have a story I wrote for the spn_xx challenge which definitely meshes with the intention of the comm. Would it be okay to post a link to it here?

Thanks!

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Of course! Thanks for posting.

[siljamus]

Hi.

I was wondering if the comm is going to be active again this year? I really enjoyed this last year and if it's going to be open for business again I wanted to start promoting it.

(I hope this is the right place to ask.)

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Absolutely--any promoting you want to do would be fantastic, and I'll make an announcement this week. Thanks!

[alara-r.livejournal.com]

Question re the genderswitch issue.

I'm currently writing a story about a canonical female character, who is dragged into having to deal with another canonical female character, in a universe where the canonical male character who is making all this happen has been genderswitched. So the main character *is* a woman, the character whose relationship with her this is about is a woman, but the plot device character who is sort of the main antagonist is a genderswitched character. Is this acceptable?

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure--if your primary focus is on a woman or women, to my mind the presence of a genderswitched supporting character is okay. I think there's a difference between "here's a story about these women and hey, this dude also happens to be a girl in this universe" and the story being all about that dude as a woman, and based on your description your story sounds more like the former than the latter.

[rynia.livejournal.com]

Question: would it be acceptable to recommend a series here that centers around female characters? It'd be a mixture of picspam, meta, and informational post concerning Revolutionary Girl Utena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Girl_Utena).

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Go for it! Just mention that up front (that it's a series centering around female characters) when you post.

[infiniteviking]

Is it okay to post something really OLD? *eyedart*

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

If it's super old, maybe just post a link and description, but sure!

[elanurel.livejournal.com]

Hey, there! I have some SPN/Firefly crossovers I'd like to post. My concern is that I've made Ruby something of the bad guy. I don't want to post something that could be perceived as character bashing, and wanted to check to see if that would be okay.

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Is Ruby the main character? If not, is the main character (or characters, if there are more than one) a woman? I simply ask because your description of Ruby as the bad guy makes her sound like antagonist rather than protagonist.

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

Does all fandoms encompass RPF? I know several people on my flist who like writing about girls in bands, for example.

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

If you check the tags, you'll see that we have bandom there. Thanks!

[goodbyebird]

What is the minimum word count?

There’s no minimum length.

I believe it's a 100 words?:)

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

For the prompts (see the prompt post here (http://community.livejournal.com/halfamoon/95007.html)), it's 100 words. In general, there's no minimum word count for a post. We haven't run into a problem with that yet, but if we do, we'll revisit this question then. Thanks for clarifying, though!

[little-missmimi.livejournal.com]

Is it okay if the fic is a remix? (It's okay with the original author, and I'd make a note of it in the fic, but I just wanted to check.)

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Sure! As long the story fits the requirements above, remixes are fine.

[shiny-rosie.livejournal.com]

When claiming prompts, do you need to tell people what prompt you've chosen or do you just post your response to that prompt between the 1st and the 14th? Also can more than one person claim a prompt or is it gone once claimed? Thanks! :)

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

You just post your response to the prompt and a link to it in reply to the prompt. It's basically a free-for-all; anyone can answer any prompt, any prompt can be answered as many times as people want to.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Do fictional portrayals of historical women qualify, as they are in fiction, but are not actually fictional characters?

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Given that we have fiction about real women who are still alive, fictional portrayals of historical women would more than qualify! Also, dare I hope that your icon is a hint...?

[vae]

Just to let you know this comm will be linked in firefly_signal tonight unless you have any objections.

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Thanks for boosting the signal!

Question

[lothy.livejournal.com]

Hi -

I've just started a new community dedicated to women in charge (women_lead) and a friend suggested that I post about it here. Is that acceptable, to do a quick promo post?

It's fine if not :)

Re: Question

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

From what I can see the community doesn't really have much fannish content yet, so I think it would be better to wait... but if you want to crosspost some recs or links to fanfiction you've written about women in charge, we'd love to have them.

[medie]

okay, nervous as all get out, but I have a Nyota/girl!Spock story that I'd like to post, but the genderswitch rule has me thinking it's probably not allowed? It's from Nyota's POV, so focal character, but Spock's very much a part of it all, so...hmm.

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Don't be nervous, just see the rules--so, no. I think it's a gray area having a genderswitched supporting character in a story, but I can't see that Spock would be a supporting character in an Uhura/Spock piece, and the idea of the challenge is to focus on characters who are female in canon without having canonically male characters--especially one who already gets as much attention in fandom as Spock does--co-opt their femaleness as well.

However, why don't you post links to some of your Star Trek or other fic that does fall within comm guidelines (if you haven't done so already)? That gives people the chance to find other fic you've written by following those links to your own journal, and I know I've found a lot of great non-halfamoon stories that way!

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

I've just posted a half-dozen fic recs and wasn't sure whether I needed to drop you note about additional tags: Spooks, The Female Man (Joanna Russ), and The Blue Sword (Robin McKinley).

Apologies if this is superfluous, and gratitude for the wonderful comm.

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Thanks for mentioning it, we're cleaning up the tags now and will take care of it!

[crazyboltonlass.livejournal.com]

Can I ask for a Medium tag to be added to my recs post (http://community.livejournal.com/halfamoon/180097.html)? I received a comment on it this morning and it made me wonder if I had to request one? :)

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Done!

[fly-to-dawn.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I accidentally submitted two posts - the second should have the correct information. Apologies!

[fly-to-dawn.livejournal.com]

Oh hang on, you can't submit two at once. Do ignore me >.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite activites is gender!swap casting various male-heavy media (movies, TV shows, whatever). Would something like that be within bounds? I will totally understand if it isn't, but I thought I'd ask.

:D